“I—” Flushing, Iliana looked away. She had known of that rather annoying little law. “You said yourself that the food is better,” she said in self-defense.

“Aye.” He nodded solemnly. “Elgin’s fare is much improved.”

“And your people were wearing rags. ’Tis shameful.”

“Shameful to who? They have never said ’twas so.”

“Mayhap not, but just look how eagerly they bathed to get to wear the plaids.”

“You made them bathe ere ye would give them these ‘gifts’?” he sneered, and Iliana found herself blushing again, then frowned at her own reaction and lifted her chin. It had been the proper thing to do. It made no sense to put a clean plaid on a dirty body.

“The only ones who bathed to gain their plaids were the women,” he said quietly, as if to himself. “And women like to look pretty.”

“What is wrong with that?” she asked.

“Nothing. So long as they dinna forget ’tis what’s inside that is most important. I would stand next to any one o’ me ‘filthy’ men, ere I would a clean but shallow coward.”

Iliana’s gaze narrowed. She got the distinct impression he was referring to her. She was no coward. Had she not tried to escape Greenweld three times? Had she not risked a brutal beating, perhaps even death, repeatedly to save her mother? But when she said as much to her husband, he seemed unimpressed.

“Mayhap ye should consider what ye were really risking so much fer,” was all he said.

“What do you mean by that?” Iliana asked warily.

“I mean I suspect ye did all that fer yerself as much as yer mother. Ye don’t appear to take well to change.”

“That is the biggest load of cow chips I have ever heard!” Iliana snapped, incensed.

“Is it?” he asked quietly. “Every time ye’ve done something here, ye’ve used Wildwood as the excuse. Ye want Dunbar and its people as clean as Wildwood. Ye want spices and herbs like at Wildwood. Ye even have Elgin all got up like yer mother’s chef.”

Iliana frowned at his words, uncertainty plucking at her; then she smiled triumphantly. “What of you? I did not—”

“Have anyone in yer bed at Wildwood either, much as it is now. Yer nearly as pure now as when ye came to me.” Walking to the door, he paused to glance back. “When ye’ve decided to grow up and accept change as a part o’ life, ye can come ask me why a clean plaid is not healthy, or why we bathe so little, mayhap even why we have had few spices in our food. There are reasons. Just as there is a reason ye willna share me bed as a proper wife. There are always reasons, and most often they have little to do with the obvious.”

Iliana watched the door close behind him, then dropped onto the bed with a sigh.